Hamas Isolated After Coup in Egypt
The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the change of leadership in Qatar and the loss of Iranian support have left Hamas isolated.
Hamas is in shock.
Just one year ago, on June 30, 2012, the movement’s followers were sure that God Himself had intervened and the Muslim Brotherhood, which had just won the Egyptian elections, would open the Gates of Heaven for them, or at the least the border crossings from Gaza to Egypt and the rest of the world.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, was radiant when he arrived then in Cairo for a meeting with the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie. He congratulated Badie and the newly elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and declared that the rise of Hamas was the first indication that the Islamist movements would achieve victory in the new Arab Spring.
Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal, the chairman of the political bureau of Hamas, quickly discovered that even if spring had come to Egypt, no fresh gust of air was making its way across the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.
